


Turns You Into Stone

by Acxa_Kogane



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Fear is a powerful tool, Gen, Gotham City is Terrible, Gotham City is alive and evil, Gotham City is toxic, It's actually kinda creepy, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Personification, Poetic, Why Batman can't change Gotham City, You Can't Escape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:09:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28744503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acxa_Kogane/pseuds/Acxa_Kogane
Summary: The Gotham air was cold. It was harsh, brittle. It sank into your bones till they were as strong as the stones of the city itself. Until you too were petrified – too cemented in place to change.
Relationships: Gotham City & Jason Todd
Comments: 15
Kudos: 29





	Turns You Into Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Turns You Into Stone" by Fleurie

The Gotham air was cold. It was harsh, brittle. It sank into your bones till they were as strong as the stones of the city itself. Until you too were petrified – too cemented in place to change. 

Gotham changed you that way. Not like other cities where you changed to fit in with them – though that was true of Gotham as well – but Gotham drained you dry, sapped your heat and life. Turned you to stone and waited paitently for your heart to stop beating. 

Always paitent. Always waiting. The grit and grime of Gotham ground into your skin. Every night you fell and gravel embedded itself into your skin, you lost yourself to the city a bit more until it rests in your bone marrow and flows in your blood.

There's a reason why Gotham never changes. Because every time someone thinks they can change her, she'll fight back and slowly drown them in the dreary gloom till it solidifies around them, too cold and tired to fight any harder. If they're even still fighting. 

Batman, for all his good intentions, never understood that about Gotham. Bruce grew up in the filthy parts of Gotham. Filthy rich that is. There, money has a greater hold on men than Gotham does – so she does not intervene. But down in the gutters? Down where the air is putrid and the smell is rancid? Where the grime coats everything like a second skin? That's where Gotham thrives. Everyone too stagnant, too resigned to fight anymore. This is how it is, how it's always been. 

How it always will be.

Batman never could change that. 

Because Batman himself had fallen deep into Gotham's clutches. 

Once, he had hoped for change. He hoped to make a difference. He fought the good fight and tried to adapt to the city so he knew how better to help it. Now, not even he could deny that nothing had changed. All the work Batman had done, all the countless nights he'd spent out on the rooftops, solving cases, throwing criminals in the revolving door of the GCPD and the lunatics in the identical door at Arkham – it had accomplished nothing. He had merely maintained the status quo – but even that was doubtful. If anything, he'd stopped the train from hurling downhill, and slowed it so it was only inching.

But no matter how hard he tried, no matter how many crooks he caught, he couldn't force the train back up the hill to safety. It was only a matter of time before he broke and Gotham plummeted. 

The issue with Batman, is that he is a symbol of fear. Perhaps outside Gotham, his status with the Justice League makes him more of a symbol of hope, but here in Gotham? It's just fear. And not much of it anymore. 

And what Batman also never understood, was that people don't need fear. They have enough fear as it is. Fear is temporary, it's fleeting. Humans are all too content to forget why they were so scared once they're out of danger. Rarely does fear actually drive a person to change. Sure, they'll _claim_ they'll change, and they'll mean it too. At least in the moment. 

But that moment passes all too soon, and they'll fall right back into their same patterns again and again and again.

Fear doesn't change anything.

Hope does.

Batman does not bring hope to Gotham. And that is why he can never succeed. Because with only fear, one can never make any lasting change. You can only slow the inevitable. Fear is thick and muddy and clogs you up so you can't get out and you see no way you could. It slowly kills you, like arsenic in drinking water. 

But hope. Hope is a light in the darkness. It might just be a reflection of another light, or a tiny spark that fell from the fire, but it is a light. People will fight for hope. They will die for hope. They will _change_ for hope. 

The people need a savior, and that savior is not Batman. 

Jason is not too proud to admit that he is not the perfect person for this. He is not foolish enough to say that killing is the solution. In no way does he believe that this is the only way to try and save Gotham. 

But the people need a savior, and that savior is not Batman. 

If that savior happens to be Red Hood, well fate is a fickle thing. If he fails, at least he tried. 

He doesn't think he will fail.

He may not succeed, but he will not fail.

Because he is not cold. Gotham sank into him from the moment he was born. It's in his bones, his blood. It's in the way he holds himself, in the way he speaks and thinks. He was cold in Gotham once, but at that time, he was a bit dead. 

He is no longer dead. No longer stone cold and still. Fire thrums in his veins and energy races through him until he feels like a thousand bolts of lightning are tearing through him with every heartbeat. 

The only way Gotham could turn him to stone now, is if it kills him. And he's already died once. So he will laugh against the cold and fight. He will fight to be a light for Gotham, no matter how twisted his light may be. 

It's not like he's a hero anyway. 

**Author's Note:**

> Gotham being vaguely personified has always appealed to me, so there might be more like this in the future. There's just something about it that's very dark and entrapping and I feel strongly like there's not enough fic out there taking advantage of this opportunity to play with city dynamics that are already so curiously corrupt. 
> 
> Also the dynamic interplay between fear and hope and how those can enslave or free people en mass is something that is of deep fascination with me. There will definitely be more of that coming in a fic I hope to be posting soon that includes both this entrapping maze of skyscrapers and the powerful mental slavery of fear and glimmering light of hope.


End file.
